Queen Of Rain
by my little black book
Summary: In response to a song I quite like... The end of Hogwarts looms near, and Hermione has no idea what to do with herself. Guidance is found in the usual way - through research and her teachers
1. Chapter 1

A/N: A little song that one day I realised was very easily applied to one of our favourite couples... My attempt at an angst song fic, see how it goes shall we?

_In that big, big house, there are fifty doors, and one of them leads to your heart.  
In the time of spring, I passed your gate, and tried to make a start..._

Hermione passed through the halls of Hogwarts, past the many doors and windows, acknowledging the portraits on the walls, the statues and armour saluting her in greeting. The Head Girl was making her last rounds of the castle.

In all her years here, she had never yet imagined life without Hogwarts. How could she? It was all she had ever known of the wizarding world. She had so many suggestions, so many offers from so many people. What would she do with herself, now she no longer had to study to prove herself to society? Probably continue to study, she thought morosely to herself. It's all she knew, all she was known for, and her heroics in the war had done nothing but drag more of the irritating public eye towards her.

They depressed her, no one knew a thing about her, except she loved books and thanks to that had managed to help the One Wonder Boy (as she now called him) defeat the despot Voldemort. She had no friends, and the closest things she had to relatives and family were her teachers and her books. Her life was Hogwarts, and she didn't know how to manage without it.

Despondent and dejected, she trailed the halls, smiling with a half effort at the castle inhabitants. She was not full of the excitement of her peers at leaving, not eager to consume the sumptuous leaving feast, and least of all, she was not looking forward to the Farewell from her teachers.

The Farewell was a kind of ceremony, a parting, a goodbye, thrown by the Professors for the leaving class of seventh years. It was held in a room off the Great Hall that only ever appeared at the Leaving Feast, and what ever happened in there, was never spoken about. Even the excitement of something new and unique could not lift Hermione's spirits, and the actual goodbye from people she considered family was not something she was going to take particularly well.

And then there was him. He brought her awake in the mornings with his sneer of reality, concentrated her efforts in class with his sharp, piercing tones, gathered her thoughts in the evening with murmurs from the front, and lulled her to sleep in the black of night with the promise of dreams so real they made her never want to wake up. He kept her going, kept her in check, in line, made the sadness bearable, was an avid reminder that she was not the one worst off. And yet he was the one who seemed furthest from her, so far away from help. Never accepting, never kind, never the slightest warmth towards her.

Her prowls lead her towards the dungeons which harboured him. His door was the deepest she'd ever been, and she dare not delve further in towards the Slytherin's lair and the dank, stale, forgotten air. Exactly 50 portraits in, she knew it was his, seen him disappear into it many a night she'd come across him finishing his rounds to, watched him look at her with cold eyes and simply pass into nothingness.

What would he think of her now? No longer the bright, chirpy child of before, with her hand ever waving ever in the air. Now matured with age and battle scars, and a more sedate appearance, tone and movement. She flowed from class to class, still upright and proud, but with the grace of sadness, not elegance or joy. She was henceforth referred to as the "Stuck Up Know It All" by other students. No longer the original name he had given her, children were creative and ran with new ideas. No, she was not the girl he used to take points from. She quietly sat in the back of his class, worked on her own, which he surprisingly allowed, and neither asked nor answered a single question. He did not call on her, and their only correspondence was a glance or a look, or a red letter on her parchment. They occasionally caught each other in stare's across the hall and for a moment, she would see nothing but his eyes, and him disappearing into his door.

Surprisingly, she admitted to herself she would miss these dungeons. They a held a still calm peace not many other places in the castle could. She would miss her nightly forays, the intermittent instant in his presence, and the soothing whistle of the wind through the corridors.

She again ascended through the depths of the castle, past many doors and niches, neatly side stepping couples out saying their goodbyes without a backward glance, and moved towards the end of her rounds.

With tears in her eyes, she watched the rain fall from the Astronomy Tower, where she ended every night time round, and under the mild shelter of a weak repelling charm, wept for what she was about to lose.

A/N: For those interested, the song is Queen of Rain by Roxette, not one of their better well known ones, but I think it fits, none the less. More to come children... there is a whole song of lyrics to write about of course.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Next instalment I guess... still not sure where this is going, but I guess you never really do when you start writing.

_All I knew, was the scent of sea and dew.  
But I've been in love before, how about you?  
There's a time for the good in life, a time to kill the pain in life,  
Dream about the sun you queen of rain._

His rounds lead him the opposite way to her. She walked from her dorm to the dungeons to start; he walked from the hall to the tower to begin his night. A deliberate avoidance, she was the one the Castle most cared about, most looked after, the one the collective staff cared for... and her moods had not gone unnoticed by either party. He had also noticed it rained incessantly in the Great Hall, even when it wasn't doing so outside, but also that it grew heavier when she was around – their own Queen of Rain.

Somehow he was the source of this sadness he gathered, by the way the Castle directly made him incapable of addressing her in any unnecessary way. He had no idea it could do such a thing, but since it had, he had a much more profound respect for the apparently sentient Hogwarts.

She had changed, even he had noticed, as much as he tried to pay little attention to any one of students in particular. She was blander, more sedate, restrained. A wiser, older attitude than her age permeated her every potion, assignment and essay. No interaction with her peers except in her capacity as Head Girl seemed to occur – ever. It was almost like looking back on a past he had once known...

He had smelt the lake, felt the cold of the morning, running until his lungs gave out. Wanting to not have seen what he did, wishing he wasn't the person he was. Waiting for his heart to stop hurting as he ran from the purest revenge a man could exact on another – to take the love of his life as his own.

He didn't want to see this kill her. She was too brilliant, too much of an amazing person to let her stay in the state she was in currently. It was just too damn hard to do anything to help her when she was a student!

She was so good at Potions, Flitwick praised her prowess with Charms, Minerva adored her in Transfiguration... in fact, all of Hogwarts loved her, even the Castle itself. Of course, he didn't include himself in this, he just thought she was very smart, and worth saving.

His mind brewing, he wandered through the castle, no students out this late now, not that they needed to be protected from anyone but themselves these days. The evil they had vanquished needed to be replaced by the good of the real world, a goodness he had never really known. To replace the pain of loss with something better, worthwhile. Even he could see the promise of so much more in her; something should be done to ensure that she wasn't wasted on the everyday mundane world.

He stretched his pace to try to catch the stairs to the astronomy tower which had suddenly started to move, but they obviously jumped away from him as he tried to mount them. He started to move towards the other stairs, but they also moved abruptly so that he had to quickly lean back to prevent falling off the edge. Looking up grumpily, he realised the castle was again protecting her.

Pivoting on his heels he walked up to the nearest portrait and scared the daylights out of the young lady that was sitting in her rocking chair.

"WHAT IS THE PROBLEM THAT YOU WON'T LET ME GO ANYWHERE THAT SHE IS AND YOU WON'T LET ME SPEAK OR WRITE ANYTHING TO HER? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

The girl looked quite upset as she said "All you had to do was ask Hogwarts, there's no need to yell at me directly."

"I apologise madam, but I assume the castle needs one of you to give me the answer?"

"Humph well, yes, correctly deduced Severus. We want you to convince her to stay."

"Gladly" he mumbled under his breath "Why exactly? And what as, there are no teaching positions open."

"Because she knows us the best, walks our halls with a more familiar glide than you do. She's even made attempts to commune with Hogwarts directly, and no one since the time of the Founders has done that." His eyes widened slightly with that revelation. "She needs us too, and we can feel her pain as acutely as she does. As for the position, we were thinking she could take on multiple apprenticeships while we teach her about us."

"YOU WHAT?? YOU WANT ME TO GO TO THE STAFF BODY OF THIS SCHOOL WITHOUT THE BOARD OF GOVERNERS KNOWLEDGE AND TELL THEM HOGWARTS IS ASKING ALL OF US TO OFFER HER MULTIPLE APPRENTICESHIPS SO SHE CAN STAY HER AND KEEP TALKING TO YOU!!! ARE YOU CRAZY??"

"Really Severus, there really is no need for all the yelling, we can hear you 2 floors down. But in a nutshell, yes, that's what we want."

"I can't believe this, this is almost Dumbledore like in its scheming."

"Where do you think he got the help with ideas? Not the idiotic ones of course, but we helped a fair number of those schemes work."

"This is insane, and as much I hate to say it, highly possible that it might work. She would be happy again."

"We thought as much." The young lady smiled at him, a warm happy one that made him think how much he would like to see her happy again. "Now will you stop using me to talk to the castle so I can go to sleep please?"

"Of course madam, goodnight and thank you for your help." He bid her in a most courteous manner. She nodded and settled herself back into her chair, heading back to the sleep she was rudely awakened from. He realised again, it was probably not a good idea to piss the castle off in regards to Hermione.

Shaking his head mentally, he strode back through the castle to his quarters, and disappeared through the portrait, all the while thinking about how best to kill the pain she was in, how to get her to shine again, and learn to control the special relationship she seemed to have with their castle – their Queen of Rain.


	3. Chapter 3

_In that big old house, there are fifty beds  
and one of them leads to your soul.  
It's a bed of fear, a bed of threats  
regrets and sheets so cold._

A last day dawned. She was having quite of few of the last of something lately. But instead of the childish excitement to get away from the confines and authority of school as one would expect, she felt only loss, as she was leaving people who treated her as equals rather than a student. Hogwarts was her haven, and to leave it would mean the engulfing blackness the happiness here kept at bay would engulf her.

The Head Girl was the last one into the Great Hall for the Leaving Feast. The hall quietened as a night sky as black as the robes her and Severus wore deepened on the ceiling. She walked up the middle aisle, her robes flowing about her in a silent wind. Nodding at the staff as she took her seat, Dumbledore clapped once from the staff table and the student body turned as one to listen.

"Welcome to the Leaving Feast. Tonight we farewell one of the most important classes to grace these halls, a class that has stood together and seen each other though the trials and tribulations of a war, as well as the hard toil of a life at study. We have lost some precious lives, and others still bear the scars of their efforts. The upcoming Farewell is a ceremony designed to help the Seventh Years move on and have a smooth transition to their adult life. I ask that other students respect the privacy of this very personal event for these individuals. We are thankful to you all, congratulate you on your successes, wish you all the best in your future endeavours and ask you remember that Hogwarts is always open to you. And now let us enjoy our final meal together as a school."

The students gave the correct amount of polite applause, most of the younger years not having heard the rumours of the Farewell ceremony, and the older years just wary and curious of what may lay in store for them. It was only the students participating who were chatting away avidly about what tonight would hold.

Hermione sat in silence, no different than usual, receiving the well wishes of other students with a wan smile and polite thanks. Just patiently waiting for another "last" thing to occur. 'Technically the ceremony is a first' her ever logical brain pointed out, but not interested in having a lively internal debate over technicalities that she usually used to amuse herself.

Dinner over, the staff stood as one, and a door to the right of the staff table opened. The seventh years filed forward as one, and one by one followed the staff into the unknown. Dumbledore followed last, inscribed runic symbols with his wand over the doorway and closed it behind him. All without a word.

"Right-oh, off to your dorms students, you really wouldn't want to be disturbing the Professors' while this is going on, you hear me? But if you do I might finally have someone to clean the thestral stables for me." Filch cackled to himself as the leftover students went scampering.

"I just hope it all goes smoothly for her." He muttered as he chanced a look at the door, the runes flaring briefly under his scrutiny, before he turned and chased the last lingering students out of the hall and into their beds.

A/N: Here's to hoping I get inspired to what the actual ceremony will involve now. Thanks for reading!


End file.
